WINNER of a Pushcart Prize, The Flannery O' Connor Prize and The Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize.At forty-four, Kay Sorensen has quit drinking, smoking, and overeating, and she has almost quit reading self-help books about quitting drinking, smoking and overeating. She has divorced her deadbeat husband, finished college, and landed a job she loves directing a small branch of the county library. But Kay still has one unconquered addiction: she just can't say no to someone who needs her. So when her architect father insists he needs her to move back home and care-take the empty house she grew up in, Kay is forced to return to the site of her bitterly unhappy childhood, trying her best to ignore the ghostly presence of her dead mother and make a home for her and her son.
But she soon finds herself returning to the patterns of her childhood, where she spent years trying to please her thankless father and placate her invalid mother. When her dogmatic, born-again brother arrives, along with a slew of men from her past all seeking a home, Kay is suddenly playing housewife and host to five men with needs and demands she is struggling to meet while consistently ignoring her own.
In order to find freedom and regain her selfhood, Kay must travel halfway across the world, finally face the chattering ghosts of her past, and break out of the mold that has been set for her by the men who have controlled her whole life.